


All That

by carlyraejepsen



Series: One Kingdom Prep [2]
Category: Fire Emblem Echoes: Mou Hitori no Eiyuu Ou | Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, First Kiss, Honestly? I Have No Idea What I'm Doing, M/M, Pining, high school parties
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-27
Updated: 2017-06-27
Packaged: 2018-11-19 16:28:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11317251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carlyraejepsen/pseuds/carlyraejepsen
Summary: Gray swears that if one bad thing happens to him, it'll push him over the edge, and he'll succumb to alcohol dependency. Tobin's like, "Damn, okay, I guess."





	All That

**Author's Note:**

> this is a sequel to my other fic [Favorite Colour](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11201193) cuz i decided I wanted to write more of this. It's The Graybin High School AU That Nobody Wanted

It isn’t until tonight that Tobin realizes just how much weird shit happens at a high school party. Gray ran off after a fight with Clair, so Tobin’s running laps around the massive house in attempt to find him, barreling down hallways, pushing open doors left and right. So far, he’s walked in on some bizarrely picturesque little scenes: Forsyth and Python shooting each other with Nerf guns in what looks to be a kid’s bedroom, Faye and Silque having a soul-bonding moment in the kitchen with their arms on each other’s necks and their foreheads pressed together, a blonde guy in a letterman jacket making out with Luthier on the bed where everybody left their coats. Apparently, this is Luthier’s house, explaining the presence of his fourteen-year-old little sister who keeps trying to walk off with people’s drinks while they’re not looking. There are also several cats milling about the house and the backyard, and Alm and Celica are currently in the process of naming all of them.

Finally, in the third upstairs bathroom— seriously, how much money does this kid _have_ — Tobin finds Gray sitting solemnly on the rim of an empty bathtub, bouncing his leg so hard that it echoes off the tile floor.

“Hey— hey, what the hell happened back there?” Tobin asks, shutting the door behind him. “Why were you yelling?”

Gray takes a moment to recognize Tobin’s sudden entry, looking up at him slowly with an odd sort of bitterness. He’s dressed in that outfit he wears to every concert or dance or whatever place where there’s girls to impress: green suede sneakers, ripped jeans, black leather fingerless gloves that make him look like a douchebag, that one Joy Division t-shirt that he cut the sleeves off of to show off his arms (he can't blame him for that, though— if he had arms like Gray's, Tobin'd never wear sleeves again). His black bangs are slicked back with gel instead of his usual headband. He looks handsome. “She was the one yelling,” he murmurs, looking back to the ground.

“What happened?”

“Three shots of raspberry-flavor vodka happened.”

“... Oh, _shit_ ,” Tobin curses, taking a seat next to him on the edge of the bath— he came to the party with Kliff, so he hasn’t seen Gray all night, and he suddenly feels a pang of guilt for not looking after him this whole time. Tobin and Kliff were simply chatting on the back patio with Alm and Celica and her cute friend Mae, and he only found Gray once they’d heard shouting from the living room and came inside to see if there was any good drama. “What’s your tolerance like? How drunk are you?”

“ _I_ didn’t do shots,” he shoots him a disgusted look, “ _Clair_ did. What, are _you_ drunk?”

“No— no, man, I’ve been drinking goddamn Dr. Pepper all night.”

“Thank God,” says Gray, and he hesitantly gives Tobin a pat on the shoulder. “People are idiots for drinking. It’s poison.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go _that_ far,” Tobin laughs nervously, “I mean, it’s mostly just so they can cut loose for the night. Hard liquor sounds awful, but I was thinking about maybe grabbing a beer or something—”

“Dude, it’s literal, _actual_ poison. That’s what it does. These kids are fucking _poisoning_ themselves just so they can have an excuse for stumbling around and doing stupid shit,” he spits, taking Tobin aback. “I hate it so much.”

There’s a pause. The bass of some shitty rap song rumbles in the room underneath them. “... Was Clair mad at you _because_ she was drunk, or...?”

“She was mad at me ‘cause I wouldn’t drink _with_ her.” He chuckles tiredly, looking down at his hands and picking at his nails. “Wanna know what she told me?”

“What?”

“She told me she wanted us to get shitfaced and sleep together so that in the morning, she could just blame it on how shitfaced we were.”

“Wh— she seriously _said_ that?”

“To my face,” he laughs, “She said it to my goddamn _face_.”

Tobin thinks for a moment on how he should reply, but Gray cuts him off, throwing a hand out as if he’s arguing with the sink in front of them. “And it’s not like I didn’t _wanna_ do it or anything,” he continues. “‘Cause I really wanted to. I want her, and I wanna make her happy more than anything else, but. I just.” His hand falls. “I don't think I can’t do it.”

“Do what? Sex, or drinking, or—”

“Drinking.”

“Why not? What happened with you and alcohol?”

“My goddamn genealogy happened, alright?” He shrugs his shoulders, starts to shake out one of his hands. “Alcoholism runs in my family. It ruined my dad’s career, then his marriage, then his liver. He died at forty-five. I mean— he died at _forty-fucking-five_ ‘cause of it. So Ma had to carry the whole team, and, and, and _she_ didn’t deserve that shit, y’know? Three kids, all by herself? What the hell kinda cruel joke?”

“Gray—”

“A-and I always feel like— like I’m _so_ close to being like that,” Gray looks him in the eye, his leg shaking faster and faster, motioning a miniscule amount between his fingers, “like I’m one straw away from snapping. One bad thing happens and I’m done. And I think that if, if I drink once, then I won’t be able to stop.” He grins pathetically, breathing a laugh. “I won’t stop, man. I’ll just drink and drink until I’m too far gone to be saved.”

He laughs a little after that, wheezing, hanging his head in his hands, and Tobin has no idea what to say. He decides to firmly place his hand on Gray’s knee, ceasing the tapping of his foot.

“That’s… jeez, Gray, that’s really… it’s like the Medic from Team Fortress 2, isn’t it?”

Gray snorts, gives him an irritated look. “What the fuck? How— _how_ , exactly, is my constant looming fear of drowning myself in liquor related to Medic from Team Fortress 2?”

“It’s fucking Heavy.”

His expression goes completely blank for a moment. He opens his mouth to speak, points a finger at him, then bites his lip and lowers his hand back down. Tobin stifles a laugh in case he’s actually mad, but relief rushes through him when Gray throws an arm around his torso and laughs, craning his head back.

“This is _not_ the time for excellent jokes, Tobin—” Gray attempts to state it in a cold tone, but he laughs in the middle of it, and soon the two are just losing their shit on the side of Luthier’s upstairs bathtub. “Tobin, you are so fucking stupid, you’re a— you’re a goddamn _moron_ , y’know that? _God_ , that’s an excellent joke. Holy fuck. You’ve really learned so much from me, haven’t you?”

“Have I officially graduated from Gray Moreno’s School of Trash Jokes?”

“With _honors_ ,” he says glowingly. “You got your fuckin’ Master’s degree and everything.”

He sighs, puts his head on Tobin’s shoulder, and everything starts to feel too nice and familiar like it always does when Gray pulls weird shit like this, so Tobin’s nerves go on high alert. Scratchily, Gray asks, “Can you do somethin’ for me, old friend?”

“What?”

“If I ever tell you something like, ‘ _Hey, I wanna drink alcohol_ ,’ can you please try to convince me not to drink alcohol?”

“Of course.”

“I’m gonna give you permission to get violent here, too. Like, if you ever catch me with a drink in my hand? You are _fully_ encouraged to slap that shit onto the ground like you’re blocking a shot.” He hums, then adds, “And if it’s hard liquor, you’d be _literally_ blocking a shot. That’s incredible.”

“See, I’ve still got a _long_ way to go if I want to get a sense of humor as shitty as yours,” Tobin offers, and Gray laughs, gives him a sharp shove. “I’m happy to look out for you, man. I’d beat the hell out of whatever tries to take you away from me. If booze tries to, then I’ll totally kick booze’s ass.”

Gray straightens up, gives his hand on his knee a firm poke. “You’re a fucking fantastic friend. You’re, like, legitimately the greatest person I know. By a longshot.” He looks at him incredulously. “How come you aren’t drowning in pussy by now?”

Tobin kisses his teeth. “Believe me, I’ve been asking myself the same thing for years.”

And Gray suddenly runs the tip of his index finger from Tobin’s chin up his jaw to rest behind his ear, confirming his suspicion that some weird shit is gonna happen again, and fuck, Tobin’s gonna be thinking about how _that_ felt for at least a couple weeks. “You should get earrings,” Gray muses, pinching his earlobe softly. “Chicks dig ‘em.”

“I dunno. Do chicks dig yours?” He tips his head forward, referring to the small clear crystal studs that Gray’s so fond of wearing. Tobin’s fond of them, too.

“Totally.” He gives him a gentle smile, and the pull in his chest is nearly unbearable.

“So, are we just… gonna wait out the rest of the party in here, or what?”

“Nah, I’m tired, and this music blows.” Gray raises an eyebrow, and he asks in a mockingly flirtatious tone, “How about we go back to your place, eh?” He leans in, places his hand gently on Tobin’s cheek. “Pick up a pizza? Play some Street Fighter or somethin’?”

Tobin lets the moment last for far too long, letting Gray keep his palm against the side of his face, brushing gingerly with his thumb until he forgets to mind the stupid goddamn fingerless gloves. His expression softens, but he doesn’t look mad. It sounds like they’re playing some corny slowdance song downstairs.

“... You know how we watched _Blade Runner_ last week?” He asks weakly, wanting desperately to break eye-contact but finding himself unable to move.

“Yeah?”

“You know how,” he swallows, his face unbearably hot, “you know how shit got weird during the second act? Like, _this_ type of weird?”

Gray hesitates, then nods. He looks down at Tobin’s lips, and Tobin regrets ever wanting anything in the first place. “... You gonna do it this time?”

“Do what?”

He whispers, “Are you gonna kiss me, or are you just gonna stare like an idiot again?”

And Tobin kisses him before he has the chance to overthink it. He kisses him too hard and for too long, gripping at the front of his shirt, thumbing at its frayed collar. Gray kisses almost exactly like Tobin had imagined he would, and that fact alone nearly compensates for the mortifying number of times that Tobin’s thought about kissing him; he’s all passion and no technique, rushing into every motion, pushing close until Tobin’s back is at a slant. Gray leans into another when he parts to breathe, and soon there’s nothing to hear but each other’s rough breathing, nothing else going on in the world, nothing at all.

Then Gray pushes him back even further for a moment, and he almost falls into the tub. He bites his lip, then warbles, “I— I feel like we did it wrong.”

Tobin breathes a laugh, almost offended. “What makes you say that?” He asks, half-joking, absentmindedly wiping his mouth with his sleeve.

“‘Cause, ‘cause I was thinking, y’know, I kept thinking that once we kissed, something was gonna click in my mind and I’d be like, ‘ _Oh, wow, I was gay the whole time_ ,’ and then all the weird tension would go away and it’d all just be simple, just you and me and that’s it— but it didn’t _happen_ ,” he gestures to his own chest, “I feel so much weird bullshit for you, and then I still feel stuff for girls on top of it, a-and _Clair_ on top of it, and it’s so, it’s, it’s so complicated, it trips me up, and I didn’t.” He grimaces. “I didn’t think any of this through.”

“I think…” Tobin makes a face. “I think we might need to talk about it. How we feel about each other, what we should do next or whatever.”

“... I mean, you’re probably right,” Gray says defeatedly.

Tobin chews the inside of his cheek, glancing away for a second. “... Do you, uh, _wanna_ talk about it?”

“Not even a little bit.”

“Me neither,” he snickers, and Gray grabs and pulls hard at the lapels of his jacket, and they’re kissing again, hot and open-mouthed and urgent because who _knows_ when their next chance is gonna be— and Tobin’s hand starts to stroke at Gray’s thigh through his jeans, and Gray says his name so softly, so _sweetly_ between kisses, clasping his strong arms around his back and trying his best to keep balance—

“Tobin, Tobin, hey—”

“Hold on, gimme a second—”

“ _What_ ,” says Alm as he walks through the bathroom door, one hand on the doorknob and the other on his belt buckle.

“Alm!” Tobin yelps as Gray’s arms shoot right back to his sides— he immediately elbows Gray hard in the gut, effectively toppling him back into the bathtub with a loud curse. “Hey, hi, what’s up?”

“I just— I just needed to use the bathroom, what the hell? What’s going _on_ right now?”

“Oh, well, uh, f-funny story here,” Tobin laughs, and he shoots Gray an apologetic look before continuing with, “Gray got _so_ drunk that he thinks I’m a _girl_ , and, uh, and now he keeps trying to hit on me.”

He sees Gray’s eyes light up in understanding. “C’mooon, sweetheart,” he slurs exaggeratedly, raising a limp hand up to wave at him, “lemme jus’ dance with you, awright?”

Tobin has to bite his lip to keep from laughing when he looks at Alm— surprisingly, he seems to be _buying_ it. “Oh, man, that’s _hilarious_ ,” Alm laughs, taking a good look at Gray and seeing no problem whatsoever. “Pretty embarrassing, though. It’s a good thing he won’t remember any of it, right?”

“Exactly,” Tobin says, and Gray stares at him in a sort of “ _get-a-load-of-this-guy_ ” fashion, and he has to strain so hard that he almost gets a headache. “Hey, Alm? Would you mind helping me get Gray back to his car? I’m gonna drive him home for the night.”

“Good idea,” Alm says. “How’re we gonna get him out of the bathtub?”

“I can do it my god damn _self_ , thhhhank you very much,” Gray says, clumsily pushing himself forward, onto the rim of the bath and then onto his feet— he stands for just a split second before he doubles over and holds onto the sink, and Tobin has to admit that the act is pretty convincing. “Can get to my _own_ fucken’ car. Motherfuckers.”

“Here,” Tobin says, grabbing one of Gray’s arms and pulling it around his shoulder, “You get his other arm. He’s parked right out front.”

“Sure thing,” Alm smiles, and the two easily manage to support Gray’s weight as they drag him into the hallway, down the main staircase. The party shows no sign of stopping, as much chaos as there was when he’d first gotten here.

Yelling over the crowd, Tobin says, “Hey, if you want, I can give you a ride home, too,” and it’s mostly just because he really loves Gray’s car and Gray never lets him drive it. “I mean, you’re not really planning on sticking around, are you? This isn’t really your scene.”

“Are you kidding?” Alm laughs, pulling a little more of Gray’s weight onto himself, and damn, the kid is a _lot_ stronger than he looks. “Me and Celica just found a ping-pong table in the basement, and— get this— we found _three_ more cats! The two of us are gonna be here _all_ night.”

Tobin snorts and looks the other way. Gray unresponsively stomps on his foot when the staircase ends as punishment for offering Alm a ride, and Tobin would threaten to drop him if he could. On their way through the kitchen, they have to push their way through a crowd watching a guy with long purple hair perform an interpretive dance routine on one of the countertops.

When they get back out to the living room, he sees the fourteen-year-old standing attentively beside the couch where a passed-out Clair sleeps wrapped up in a thick blanket. It looks like she might be keeping guard or something. When some dude comes up to her and uncaps a marker, the little girl promptly grabs his wrist and twists it until he yelps and backs away, cursing at her and running off. The sight is greatly reassuring. Tobin reminds himself to call Clair in the morning.

They finally make it to the front porch, nearly tripping over some goth girl smoking a cigarette with another one of Celica’s friends. Even as Gray drunkenly rambles and shifts his weight on his limbs, it’s fairly easy to get him down the lawn and buckled into the passenger’s seat of the dopeass BMW that nobody knows how he can afford, and it probably has to do with the fact that he’s completely sober. Alm tells Tobin to make sure that Gray drinks plenty of water so that he doesn’t get dehydrated or hungover.

“You still have your keys, right?” Tobin asks, to which Gray just shrugs, his head falling back against the seat, still keeping up the act.

Tobin sighs and sticks his hand into Gray’s front pocket to fish out his keyring, to which he loudly replies, “Hey, at least take me to _dinner_ first, babe.” It makes Alm laugh hard as he walks back to the house, and Tobin briefly hopes that he’ll tell people about this in order to embarrass the hell out of Gray.

As soon as Tobin gets in the driver’s seat and starts adjusting his mirrors, Gray sits up straight. “You let _anything_ happen to this car and I'll skin you alive, got it, pretty boy?” He says crisply and threateningly, and Tobin flinches so hard that he almost pulls the center mirror clean off. Gray starts to laugh, and Tobin can’t help but join, shaking his head and starting the engine.

The ensuing car ride is fairly quiet; part of it is from sheer awkwardness, and part of it is the fact that they're both genuinely tired. Gray messes with the radio, flipping through all the preset channels and finding nothing but garbage. He hears a familiar guitar riff on one of the stations, and Gray stops it there with an exclamation of, “Fuckin’ A! Weezer! Dude, it’s your _favorite_!”

Tobin just chuckles, nodding and trying to focus when Gray starts to bang his head like it’s the greatest song in the world— see, Gray loves to poke fun at the fact that Tobin said he’d liked Weezer at some point, because Gray fucking _hates_ Weezer. Tobin never even liked them that much in the first place, but Gray still thinks it’s funny. Making fun of white people is one of Gray's favorite things in the world.

He can only take so many choruses of Gray screaming “ _Say it ain’t sooo_ —” before he snaps, pressing a random button on the radio that plays some stupid pop music instead. Gray grumbles, slides back in his seat, feigning extreme disappointment for the rest of the trip.

When they finally get to Tobin’s house and he shuts the gas off, they both unbuckle their seatbelts and sit there for a moment. Gray drums his fingers on the dashboard, looking around. Tobin’s neighborhood is still and quiet, the wind gently pushing the big sycamores that leave branches all over their yards, nothing but yellow light from through people’s windows. “... Ma’s gonna be wondering where I am,” Gray finally says. “I probably shouldn’t stay. I’ll take a raincheck on that Street Fighter.”

“That’s reasonable,” Tobin says, giving him a tired smile before pulling the parking brake and getting out of the car. Gray springs over the console into the driver’s seat as if he’d missed it dearly, closing the door when Tobin backs away; he rolls down the window when Tobin doesn't move, as his legs don’t seem to be working correctly. “W-what, you’re not gonna walk me to my doorstep?” Tobin chuckles, blushing like an idiot, crossing his arms and leaning onto the window’s frame.

Gray presses a finger onto his arm. “Not a chance.”

“C’mon, I was just kidding.”

“ _Sure_ you were,” Gray says, and there’s a second’s pause. They stare at each other again, unsure whether it’d be appropriate to laugh or not. Gray then slowly leans to kiss him through the window of the car, gentle enough to get Tobin’s heart thrumming like he’s never been kissed in his life.

He looks at him for an instant longer when he pulls back, nervously clearing his throat. “... Get some sleep, Toblerone,” he manages, and Tobin just gives him a hesitant half-wave as the window rolls up and the engine rumbles to a start again, walking around the car to stand on the curb in front of his house as he leaves.

He stays there for a while, standing in place, staring until his taillights are just the faintest speck at the end of the long street, until they’re blinking in the distance, until he turns a corner and they’re gone completely. He sits on the curb afterwards for a while, still staring at the faraway intersection as if he’ll change his mind and come back to play some video games like friends do. 


End file.
